The object of this blog began as a display of a varied amount of writings, scribblings and rantings that can be easily analysed by technology today to present the users with a clearer picture of the state of their minds, based on tests run on their input and their uses of the technology we are advocating with www.projectbrainsaver.com

APRIL JONES MISSING'Please don't get in the van': Friend begged April Jones not to get in kidnapper's vehicle

Officers are quizzing a 46-year-old man, named locally as Mark Bridger, who was arrested in the town where April was abducted

Lost girl: April Jones in the same purple coat she wore on Monday

PA

The best friend of snatched April Jones begged her not to get into the van in which she was driven off by a kidnapper.

As police and neighbours last night continued the hunt for the missing five-year-old, an RAF search and rescue helicopter was scrambled to a “very specific ­location” at short notice with police on board.

The RAF Sea King flew from the same base on Anglesey where Prince William is based. He was not involved in the search operation.

Powys Chief ­Superintendent Reg Bevan, leading the hunt for the girl who was wearing her favourite purple knee-length coat when she disappeared, said last night: “April is still missing and all lines of inquiry are ­continuing with the view she is alive.”

He appeared before magistrates this morning when an extension of 36 hours was granted to allow us to further question him.

We have until just before 5pm tomorrow before we either charge, release or apply for a further warrant of detention.

The investigation continues and our focus remains on finding April.

The investigative team will be further interviewing Mark Bridger today. We will be continuing to piece together his movements during the relevant times and looking to overlay what we glean from his interviews, witness accounts and sightings.

While there is a huge visible presence of police officers and search teams, there is also a significant team of officers working around the clock behind the scenes, assisting in developing that picture so we can map out to the best of our ability his movements.

This includes a vast amount of forensic analysis taking places which forms a crucial part of the investigation, however forensics alone will not solve this.

We need information from the public which may help us find April.

In particular we are looking to trace the movements of Mark Bridger between 6.30pm on Monday and 3.30pm on Tuesday and any sightings of him between these times.

In addition, if anyone had contact with him between these times, we would urge you to come forward.

By contact I mean any contact - including face to face, telephone, text or social media.

We also need information regarding the movements of the blue Land Rover Discovery registration number L503 MEP between Monday evening and Tuesday afternoon.

Statement by Superintendent Ian John:

We are appreciative of the support from volunteers who we know desperately want to assist in the search to find April, which remains our top priority.

We continue to implement the police led searches in partnership with other police forces from around the UK, which includes nationally recognised search advice, Mountain Rescue, Coastguard and other agencies.

We understand fully why people feel the need do something practical to get out and try to find April. We want to ensure that we do all we can to find her, and at the same time do nothing to jeopardise the effort to locate her.

We are consulting the National Police Search Centre to see how we can best use the untrained community volunteers to do this.

We want people to come forward to provide the volunteer search coordinators with their details and what skills and local knowledge they possess.

We have developed a set of questions which we want the coordinators in Machynlleth Leisure Centre to complete and feed to us. This information will help us make a wider search more effective for us.

I also remind people to look at their immediate environment and search their gardens and outbuildings and let us know if they have any information that can help us locate April. We can then process this information to help us in our on-going evaluation of our search priorities.

By way of reassurance we have the following specialist resources deployed now:

This is undoubtedly a large and complex search operation of it’s kind in recent policing history.

We will continue to do all that we can collectively to find April.

The three key messages for me are:

Volunteers are welcomed.

The police must co-ordinate the search activity to ensure integrity of the search operation.

Under Police co-ordination we can use volunteers at the right time, in the right place and utilise appropriate skills. This will maximise opportunities and prevent people attending when there may not be readily available tasks.

Tuesday, 2 October 2012

The personality and gender of the automated voices you hear when calling your credit card company or receiving directions from your GPS navigational system may have an unconscious effect on your perception of the technology.

Researchers Rochelle Edwards and Philip Kortum at Rice University have conducted a study focusing how the gender and tone selected for an IVR affects its user-friendliness in which participants interacted with a medical IVR that collected information about their health. Users responded to both male and female voices that spoke in different tones, such as upbeat, professional, or sympathetic, and were then asked to judge the system’s usability. Edwards and Kortum will present their paper, “He Says, She Says: Does Voice Affect Usability?” at an upcoming Human Factors and Ergonomics Society meeting,

Past studies have indicated that users are more responsive to actual human voices than to computer-generated voices, but little research has been completed on the role that voice characteristics play in user perceptions of the technology.

“We have been systematically looking at what affects user performance on IVRs for some time now,” said Kortum. “Voice is the major element in an IVR interface, as graphical elements are for a Web page, and this study was a first attempt to understand the impact voice might have on the perceived usability of such systems.”

The authors found that although IVRs with male voices tended to be perceived as more usable than those with female voices, they were not considered more trustworthy. The researchers encourage designers to take voice characteristics into consideration when developing future systems.

“Anyone who uses an IVR knows how frustrating they can be,” said Kortum. “Much of this frustration stems from poorly designed IVRs, not from the form of interface being intrinsically “bad.” This research shows that some simple modifications to the design of these systems can have an impact on the usability of voice interfaces.”

The personality and gender of the automated voices you hear when calling your credit card company or receiving directions from your GPS navigational system may have an unconscious effect on your perception of the technology.

Researchers Rochelle Edwards and Philip Kortum at Rice University have conducted a study focusing how the gender and tone selected for an IVR affects its user-friendliness in which participants interacted with a medical IVR that collected information about their health. Users responded to both male and female voices that spoke in different tones, such as upbeat, professional, or sympathetic, and were then asked to judge the system’s usability. Edwards and Kortum will present their paper, “He Says, She Says: Does Voice Affect Usability?” at an upcoming Human Factors and Ergonomics Society meeting,

Past studies have indicated that users are more responsive to actual human voices than to computer-generated voices, but little research has been completed on the role that voice characteristics play in user perceptions of the technology.

“We have been systematically looking at what affects user performance on IVRs for some time now,” said Kortum. “Voice is the major element in an IVR interface, as graphical elements are for a Web page, and this study was a first attempt to understand the impact voice might have on the perceived usability of such systems.”

The authors found that although IVRs with male voices tended to be perceived as more usable than those with female voices, they were not considered more trustworthy. The researchers encourage designers to take voice characteristics into consideration when developing future systems.

“Anyone who uses an IVR knows how frustrating they can be,” said Kortum. “Much of this frustration stems from poorly designed IVRs, not from the form of interface being intrinsically “bad.” This research shows that some simple modifications to the design of these systems can have an impact on the usability of voice interfaces.”

Supreme Court case tests US leadership in human rights

Today the Supreme Court will assess whether US courts can hear lawsuits that pertain to events outside the country. If the justices eventually decide 'no,' an important avenue for redress will be closed to foreign victims of human-rights abuses – and America’s beacon will shine less brightly.

By Jodie A. Kirshner / October 1, 2012

The US Supreme Court is under a protective scrim, as work continued on the facade Sept. 27. Op-ed contributor Jodie A. Kirshner writes about the case the court will hear on the first day of its new term today: 'Between 1994 and 1995, [Barinem] Kiobel and other residents of the Ogoni region of Nigeria were arrested, tortured, convicted of murder in a sham trial, and shot.' With no redress in Nigeria, Kiobel's widow and survivors 'turned to the American courts.'

Houston, TX (October 2, 2012) — Early Monday morning, 71,010 Shell employees received an email from the company's "Grassroots Employee Empowerment Division" providing information on Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, a pivotal human rights case being argued in the U.S. Supreme Court. The email contained links to news stories, as well as a tool to help employees tweet their feelings about the case at key US news anchors (and Oprah Winfrey).

The only thing is, Shell has no "Grassroots Employee Empowerment Division," and they don't want publicity for the case. The email was in fact the work of an activist group called People Against Legalizing Murder (PALM), who received the list of Shell emails from what they believe to be a group of disaffected employees. (A similar leak occurred two years ago.)

Within minutes of the email being sent out, Shell internally blocked the site, preventing employees from accessing it. "I would love to participate, but access is denied to all links you sent out," wrote one employee among many. The 71,010 employees were informed this morning of the situation and the site's new URL.

PALM intended the action to help shine a spotlight on the case, brought by the widow of Dr. Barinem Kiobel, who was hanged along with novelist Ken Saro-Wiwa for opposition to Shell's drilling plans in West Africa. Shell is alleged to have aided paramilitary forces that raided more than 60 villages, killed over 800 people, and displaced 30,000 more.

To prevail, Shell lawyers must overturn a 200-year-old law, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), that compensates victims of international crimes. (The law has been used to compensate Holocaust survivors who sued for restitution from corporations that profited from slavery and forced labor during World War II.) Shell's lawyers are arguing that their corporation is not subject to the ATS because it is not a person.

"When it comes to things like election spending, Shell and other corporations want to have all the rights of people," said Sean Dagohoy from PALM. "But when accused of murder, Shell conveniently argues that they aren't a person. A ruling in their favor would be a very dangerous precedent, and would badly undermine the United States' reputation as a place that cares about human rights. That's why we attempted to reach out to Shell employees to help get the word out."

"Surely most Shell employees, like most people, don't want multinationals to get away with murder just because murder's convenient," said Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Lab, which provided technical assistance for the action.

"Shell needs to let its employees speak," said Mike Bonanno of the Yes Lab. "They can prevent it for a day, but in the long run they have no choice."Contact

And what about his cronies. It wasn’t so long ago that they were all attacking Labour for holding an attitude towards disabled people as being ‘scroungers’.

Quentin Davis, Conservative MP and spokesman for social security – and under the guidance of William Hague – told us that “those who are disabled should get the support they need to lead a fulfilling life with dignity. I am proud that we in the Conservative party never thought of taking such measures when we were in power.”

No I’m not making this up. It’s all recorded in Hansard if you care to look.

So what the hell is driving Cameron in this apparent complete turn around in Tory policy. And why are the rest of the government supporting him?!

And by the way, I make no apology for the cartoon that accompanies this blog. Some of you may consider it in the worst possible taste and feel that I’ve over stepped the mark here. But as far as I’m concerned Cameron has crossed a line with regard to his total disregard of disabled people, their families and friends and deserves everything he gets!